Hasta La Gadget!

What happens when a bike maker forgets about the UCI rules that govern the weights of competition road bikes? You end up with a machine which weighs just six pounds. That’s not a typo: 6-lbs.

Lance Armstrong and the other racers in the Tour de France must have bikes weighing 6.8-kilos, or 15-pounds. This machine, built by Fairwheel Bikes of Tuscon, weighs in at less than half that. And according to the anonymous owner, it is tough enough to ride, having clocked up around 20,000-miles.

To get the weight down, pretty much every part has been tweaked. Almost everything is made from carbon fiber, of course, but here are a few ridiculously small numbers for you. The brakes are AX Lightness (130-145 grams the set, depending on model). The crankset, iuncluding bearings, is 281-grams. The AeroLite Lite Pedals weren’t Lite enough, so they have been drilled to further reduce weight. And the wheels? According to Rico de Wert, the builder of the cranks, both wheels together weigh just 585-grams. That’s 1.29-pounds for the pair.

Velonews spoke to the folks from Fairwheel, who were showing off the machine at this year’s Interbike, and you can read the full list of specs over at the site. It really is a crazy-light bike, and it gets me thinking about just how pointless it is, too. While properly inflating your tires won’t add a significant amount to the weight, drinking just three liters of water before getting in the saddle would actually add more to your weight than the mass of this entire bike. And imagine how light this thing would be if they took off the gears and made it fixed.

The bike isn’t for sale, but if you were to make your own, it would cost you $45,000.

A $45,000, six pound carbon road bike assembled by Fairwheel Bikes [Velonews]

Photo: Velonews

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Follow us for real-time tech news: Charlie Sorrel and Gadget Lab on Twitter.

If you can’t ride your bike safely with one hand, you probably shouldn’t be on the road. Poor control skills, though, are the excuse for the Seil bag, a bikers’ backpack with flexible LEDs and circuitry applied to the back which lets you make turn signals with both hands on the bars.

The Seil, by Lee Myung Su Design Lab, comes with a removable, bar-mounted wireless controller. Flick a lever on the side and arrows blink on your back to show where you plan to go. When not being used to warn other road users of your intentions, the LED display flashes with cute little symbols: space-invaders, hearts and the like, guaranteed to either distract or infuriate drivers.

Indicators on bikes keep popping up, either as concepts or as actual products, but never catch on. This is likely because anyone experienced and responsible enough will be comfortable with giving good, clear hand signals and would therefore never pay for extra blinking lights. These things are a novelty, and sticking them on a backpack is even worse. What if it stops working and you lurch across traffic thinking without signaling? Or if you don’t have your pack with you one day and (gasp) are forced to use boring old arms to signal?

Happily, the Seil remains a concept, not an actual product.

Seil bag [Lee Myung Su Design Lab]

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Follow us for real-time tech news: Charlie Sorrel and Gadget Lab on Twitter.

By Mark Brown

Bicycle designers from Hungary have revealed the Stringbike in Padova, Italy, a bike design that drops the common chain in favour of a wire and pulley system.

While it might seem like a complicated answer to a non-existent problem, the Hungarian creators assure that their symmetric system lends itself to an extra level of comfort and efficiency.

Typical bikes, of course, have a chain and gears on just one side of the bike. The Stringbike creators, at bike manufacturing company Schwinn Csepel Zrt, write that “asymmetry has been the source of lots of problems”. However, other than slipping chains and oily jeans, they’re mostly “unnoticeable” problems, until you’ve tried a symmetrical system first hand.

The new design’s mechanics are considerably more complicated than the traditional chain, and is possibly best left to the video (embedded below) to explain. In the most basic terms, the movement of the pedal forces a swinging arm to move about its shaft, pulling a taught cable around a pulley system. With each push, the task is swapped from the left side to the right.

The Stringbike offers up a few extra advantages over its chain-driven predecessor. The pedal system can be replaced with different discs for separate purposes, for example. Racing and touring could use different shaped and sized parts, to alter performance and function. Plus, the rear wheel can be removed in seconds, for portability.

You’ll also have no grease or oil to deal with, but it doesn’t look like you’ll be able to fix this quite as easily as replacing a knackered chain. The official website mentions that while you will be able to take it an appropriate service location, you can repair a Stringbike at home. Although, that would presumably be the least of your worries if a fast-moving, taught, metal wire lashed off its piston next to your leg. Ouch.

I spent the “Summer” in Berlin, Germany, where a cargo-carrying bike like this is a common site, stuffed with a pair of brats as its smug, over-breeding parents pedal it along the city’s many excellent bike-lanes. Berlin is pretty flat but even so, an electric boost would be nice. That’s just what the Urban Arrow will give you.

The bike comes from Amsterdam, the world capital of bike-crime, and along with its electric pedal-assist, it has a modular aluminum frame that can accept different front-ends. There’s the two-wheeled version seen here, as well as a short two-wheeler for regular biking and a three-wheel cargo-carrier for more stability. Along with the helpful power-train to get you going, there’s also a pair disk-brakes so you can stop again without dropping your up-to-180-kilo (400-pound) load.

As for carrying the kids, there is an optional rain-cover, and the EPP plastic box has a rail running around the outside to protect little fingers if you run into something while the monsters are climbing up the sides. The bike is billed on the information-free website as being the “first serious car challenger”, and that might not be too far off the mark.

The Urban Arrow won an award at the recently-ended Eurobike 2010, and should be on sale soon for an as-yet unknown price.

Urban Arrow product page [Urban Arrow. Thanks, Jorrit!]

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• Surly Trailer Hauls 300-Pounds, Replaces Your Car

Follow us for real-time tech news: Charlie Sorrel and Gadget Lab on Twitter.

Bike-maker Surly has revealed its upcoming wares ahead of the big Interbike show in Las Vegas this year. Surly makes bikes which are tough, from the fixed-gear Steamroller through the touring Long Haul Trucker to the huge cargo-carrying Big Dummy. But the thing that caught my eye was the new Surly Trailer, a monster that will haul up to 300-pounds of gear, or as many of your friends as you can fit on it.

First off, the trailer ain’t cheap. At $750 for the short (32-inch, shown above) and $775 for the long (64-inch) models, you might not want this just to move house one time, but if you view it as a way to make your bike a true car-replacement then it’s a deal. A deal that will probably last forever.

The trailer hooks onto the back-wheel on both sides of the axle and fits wheel-sizes from 20-29-inches. The rig is adjustable up and down so the load stays level whatever size wheels you have, and you hook it onto the bike using simple thumb-screws.

The advantage of a trailer over a cargo bike are many. It means you can free your bike for everyday use, and the separate parts are easier to carry up to your apartment than a long-wheelbase bike. It’s also easier to carry large loads. Try balancing out 300-pounds on even a heavy-duty cargo bike and you’ll see what I mean. The Surly Trailer also comes with “DIY mounts all over it” so you can “Make your own bed, add some uprights, strap down your friends.”

The Surly Trailer will be ready for Spring 2011.

Oh, what the hell… [Surly via Urban Velo]

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Follow us for real-time tech news: Charlie Sorrel and Gadget Lab on Twitter.